1. Technical Field
This invention relates in general to control systems for cooling data center rooms and more particularly to integrating a data center thermal control system and individual fan controllers within systems within the data center room to minimize the power required for controlling the thermal environment in the data center room.
2. Description of the Related Art
A data center is generally housed in a data center room, or other space, that houses numerous electronic systems. In one example, the electronic systems are arranged in racks and multiple racks are arranged into a row. In another example, the electronic systems are housed in server stacks.
Electronic systems can be configured to house different combinations of components including servers, networking equipment, and storage devices. The components may be embedded in a number of printed circuit (PC) boards, where the PC boards may include a number of subcomponents, such as processors, micro-controllers, video cards, memories and other devices that each dissipate heat during operation.
In a data center room, power is required to run the electronic systems, however, power is also required to remove heat dissipated by the components of the electronic systems. As the number of components in an electronic system and number of electronic systems in a data center room increases, more power is required to remove the heat dissipated by the electronic systems during operation and control the thermal environment in the data center room.
In many data centers a thermal control system, such as a Computer Room Air Conditioning (CRAC) unit, is installed to monitor and maintain the air temperature in the entire room. Separately, each system in the data center room may include one or more fans, each controlled by a separate fan controller that controls fan speeds within electronic systems, to control airflow within each system enclosure.